Mary Lawlor teaches at the Centre for Social Innovation at the School of Business at Trinity College Dublin. She founded Front Line Defenders, the international foundation for the protection of human rights defenders in 2001, which has concentrated on supporting human rights defenders at risk. Front Line Defenders (with whom IHRB collaborated and published a joint report on business and human rights defenders in 2015), has received the King Baudoin International Prize in 2007 and the UN Human Rights Prize in 2018. Prior to that, she headed Amnesty International’s Irish Section from 1988-2000, and was its chair 1983-1987.

In this conversation, Vani Saraswathi of Migrant-Rights.org tells IHRB's Salil Tripathi why companies should be actively engaged with the workers' conditions, even if they are not their direct employers, and why they should take the responsibility seriously. She calls for the pressing need for improved national labour protections for domestic workers in the Gulf and globally, because their risks have increased dramatically due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with many of them out-of-work and stranded. She offers practical steps that can be taken to safeguard their rights. 

About Vani Saraswathi:

Vani Saraswathi is the Associate Editor and Director of Projects, Migrant-Rights.org and the author of Stories of Origin: The Invisible Lives of Migrants in the Gulf.

Vani moved to Qatar in 1999, working with several local and regional publications, and launching some of Qatar’s leading periodicals during her 17-year stint there. 

Since 2014, in her role with Migrant-Rights.org she reports from the Gulf states and countries of Origin. She organises advocacy projects and human rights training targeting individual employers, embassies, recruitment agents and businesses in Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and UAE. 

She also contributes as an expert commentator on issues related to human rights in the GCC for various international publications and at international forums, including those hosted by UN agencies and is a member of the Policy Advisory Committee of the ILO Regional Office for Arab States.

Migrant-Rights.org is a one of its kind bi-lingual content-based advocacy platform that focusses on the GCC states and the corridors of migration, Asia & Africa. It was started 13 years ago by activist Esra’a El Shafei.

As the world comes to grips with the pandemic Covid-19, governments are acting in an uncoordinated manner and the international community is looking to companies to act responsibly. In this conversation with IHRB's Salil Tripathi, Antoine Bernard, who has headed the International Federation for Human Rights, known by its French acronym FIDH, and has examined the role of business with regard to human rights, speaks of the pressing need for companies to adhere to international standards.

The pandemic, he notes, comes at a time when business credibility has been tested severely, because globalisation has enabled companies to operate without clear rules regarding their responsibility. In situations of armed conflict or heightened tensions, for example, the dissemination of hate speech is enabled by technology, and groups and communities subject to attacks have few remedies available to safeguard their rights.

President of the National Human Rights Council in Morocco, Amina Bouayach, speaks with IHRB's Salil Tripathi about the need for greater corporate accountability for human rights in Morocco.

Jason Ng is a corporate lawyer who worked at a leading international bank. A blog he wrote, critical of proposed Hong Kong extradition law, caught the eye of the authorities in Beijing, and the situation escalated, leading to Ng leaving the bank.

Social, political, and economic issues come into being, policies are translated into concrete actions, rights are vindicated at the local level. So how can the human rights framework empower all involved?

As buildings go “green” to reduce their climate impacts, how do you advance social equity and the priorities of local communities? Susan Kaplan of BuildingWrx discusses with IHRB's Annabel Short.

In this podcast, TWC2's Debbie Fordyce talks to IHRB's Francesca Fairbairn about how large recruitment fees paid by migrant workers for low paid jobs in Singapore can lead to excessive overtime that can undermine their health and safety.

In this podcast, Rohini Lakshané talks to IHRB's Salil Tripathi about state-ordered internet shutdowns in India - in particular in Jammu & Kashmir and Manipur, and of the adverse human rights impacts that result, particularly for women.

In this podcast, IHRB's Salil Tripathi talks to Mark Taylor, Froydis Cameron, Marcela Manubens and Pia Rudolfsson Goyer about the state of business & human rights, and what is now needed from business, government and the proposed BHR treaty.